Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Life.



Does it really matter that if in some zombie like state,
someone liked your status?
We don’t discuss like the geniuses of the past anymore,
we clutch our keyboards and hide blue faced behind screens.
We filter what we want people to see.

When’s the last time we had a real conversation?
When we weren’t thinking about the text, snap, like,
Tweet, or follow we just got. When our hands didn’t
hover anxiously over our pockets as if by some miracle
that one ‘fine’ implied all that we wanted it to.
Have we forgotten how to talk to the people in the room?

We’ve become slaves to ourselves, in an effort to connect with
each other, we’ve connected to the outlets in walls.
 God forbid your phone run out of juice…
Because this cord connects you to the outside world,
As if it were your mother’s umbilical cord,
as if your phone granted you life.

When did we have to start proving ourselves?
My kid is the cutest, look at my sandwich, I put on my makeup today…
When did affirmation become an addiction?
As if 3,000 likes could really replace the satisfaction of placing a pair of tube socks
into the hands of a homeless woman and watching her face light up.
Because just for that moment, her burden was lifted just a little. 
But wait, I’ve forgotten, you’ve chosen to live between the replies.
Halting me, with your finger, to tell me to wait a minute while
you respond to someone who isn’t here.
You’ve resigned yourself to a text bubble that reads, (…)
Just waiting for a reply. Waiting to live until you have wifi.

How many minutes, hours, days, years have you swiped away?
How many opportunities in our real lives have we scrolled past…
In the anticipation of one lousy ‘like’?

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Butchering

Fist balled she glides the skin away from flesh.
She sinks them elbow deep down between the skin and the hide.
You try she instructs
I ball my small brown fists, little marbles beneath skin.
My knuckles scrape against the red, it's warm inside the sheep.
My knuckles are pink as kitten noses.
Grandmother's palms are flat as she grips my face and presses her lips to my forehead.
She just wrapped the fat with the intestines. Achii.

Dr. Pepper can greasy tinned rolled in salt sits on the gingham table cloth.
Fizz burns down my throat.
Flies linger on clumps of fat.

I chase them with the fly swatter.
Grandma taught me how to kill them.
The neon blue mesh whistles through the air.
SMACK! It's dotted black.

Grandmother never slapped my face, but Momma sits there.
She's smiling, thirty six years old, but still stinging.

Outside the butchered skin hangs, hardening in the sun, wool matted with sand.